Monday 15 October 2012

Managing from the Mountaintop - Background

When I decided to go to Gokyo Ri, it was with the understanding between my client and myself that I would continue to work while on the trail. The next logical question would be, "How?".

Before I get into that I suppose that it's time to tell y'all a little bit more about who I am and what I do. Basically I'm a freelance project manager who, for my sins, tends to work on software projects often focused on delivering EMC Documentum. And because I'm freelance, if I'm not working then I'm not getting paid.

Therefore I'm no stranger to remote working and most of my clients issue me with a corporate laptop and secure access to their systems so that I can work from home 1 or 2 days/week. And I've even been known to work that way when doing things like going fishing in Portugal or visiting my family in NYC. Indeed my current team is distributed so we are lucky to see one another in the flesh 1/week and during the recent London Olympics I didn't go into the office for 3 weeks at a time!

But my glib proposal to work from the Himalaya was a horse of a different feather. While this trip and the next will be during the high season and I'm more likely to find wifi, what do I do when there isn't any connectivity? And do I really want a big heavy laptop in my daysack taking up valuable shopping space? And if I wasn't going to lug around the corporate laptop, how was I going to work?

So with those questions in mind, I'm now beginning a series of posts with the prefix "Managing from the Mountaintop" that will endeavour to answer those questions from a hardware, software, and process perspective. Keep tuned.

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